Environment

[Water Resources West]

[Richard]

In our consultation events we have been talking about three different levels of environmental destination.

Level 1 is based on current known legislative requirements, ensuring the water environment doesn’t deteriorate and including cost beneficial improvements

Level 2 goes beyond this to reflect climate change and other needs

Level 3 would go even further and give greater protection to some higher risk water environments

The higher levels would involve greater reductions in abstraction and mean we would need to develop more new sources of water. Those new sources could have their own environmental impacts and come at a cost in customers water bills.

It’s generated some good discussion. Which level would you prefer? How much extra would you be prepared to pay?

[Richard]

We have also been talking about how we prioritise interventions to help achieve our environmental destination. There are different ways we could do this.

1. Prioritise reducing abstraction and focus on increasing low river flows and groundwater levels.

2. Seek to maximise multiple benefits and focus on activities that could give the greatest overall improvement to rivers and water bodies.

3. Focus improvements on the greatest needs and where we can make the most difference, recognising that each catchment will have different needs.

Which approach do you think we should be using?

[ameredith]

Level 3

[Author]

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